


Don't Take My Stuff

by Kadorienne



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Thor, Loki wasn’t the bad guy in The Avengers, Loki's resistance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 07:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2573942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kadorienne/pseuds/Kadorienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's boyfriend disappears for over a year, and comes back with a crazed look in his eyes and some nasty new friends. And Tony's the only one who realizes he might need help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Slightly canon divergent: Tony and Loki start seeing each other in between the events of _Iron Man_ and _Thor_.
> 
> Guess what? I don't depict Thor in a positive light. Don't like, don't read.

Tony’s suspicious of his new boyfriend from the start. He knows something’s off, it just takes him a while to figure out _how_ off. 

Sure, Loki misses pop culture references, but he’s a foreigner; he’d grown up in some Scandinavian place and learned British English, which gave him a really sexy accent, by the way. And he’s a geek - they first bond over Loki’s questions about the arc reactor, because Loki is a scientific genius and they spend as much time playing in Tony’s workshop as they do nailing each other to Tony’s mattress. Geeks don’t watch the same tv shows and listen to the same music as everybody else, they stumble onto their own idiosyncratic interests and wind up knowing everything about Ella Fitzgerald while they never heard of Avril Lavigne.

But there are other anomalies. Sometimes Loki lifts things that should be too heavy for him. Nothing flashy, he doesn’t pick up a car or anything, it’ll just be something in the lab, an engine or whatever, usually something Tony could lift but with a lot more effort, and Loki will just heft it like it’s a sack of feathers.

Loki doesn’t have to shave. Tony wakes up beside him plenty of times and his face is always silky smooth. Loki’s hands are cold most of the time, which occasionally causes Tony a few minutes of discomfort.

Tony thinks of vampires, of course he does. But Loki eats normal food (and a  _lot_ of it, another weird thing considering how skinny he is), and he neither explodes nor sparkles in the sunlight.

So Tony approaches the problem scientifically. Gathering hair and, ah, bodily fluids from Loki is no challenge. While the equipment he’s ordered is processing Loki’s DNA, Tony does a different kind of research. He’d assumed that it was normal for Norwegians or Swedes or whatever to name their kids after Norse gods - Thor Heyerdahl, right? - but given that something hinky is definitely going on, well.

So he reads the myths, and then Jarvis explains about Loki’s DNA. And the next time Loki drops by and Jarvis lets him in and they’re together in Tony’s living room sitting at the bar, Tony’s ready.

“Will you tell me the truth?”

Loki goes very still. He doesn’t pretend not to understand. Tony gives him credit for that.

“No, probably not,” he admits after a minute. “I’d rather hear your theories.”

“I’ve considered radioactive spiders and kryptonite.”

Loki gives that sharp smile that always makes Tony want to drag him onto the nearest flat surface. Tony resists the urge just now. Flat surfaces aren’t going anywhere. “All superhero stuff, right?” Loki’s tone is gently mocking. “But what if I’m not the hero? What if I’m the bad guy?”

“You’re impossibly fast and strong. Your skin is pale white and ice cold. Your eyes change color, and sometimes you speak like - like you’re from a different time. How old are you?”

“By Earth years, I am a thousand years older than you.”

Tony has to spend a minute just taking that in.  _A thousand years._ Loki doesn’t even look thirty.

“I know what you are.” Tony’s voice is barely a whisper.

Loki searches his face. “Say it. Out loud.”

“Alien.”

Loki just looks at him, draws a breath. “Are you afraid?”

“No. You’ve visited my planet before, haven’t you?”

“Long ago.”

“Your name is Loki.”

“The last time we were here, all my brother had to do was summon some lightning and you thought we were gods. Humans are much harder to impress nowadays.”

“Your brother? Thor?”

“Yes.”

“So why are you here?”

Loki shrugs, elegant. Already he’s relaxing again now that Tony isn’t flipping out over banging an alien. “I was bored.”

“You’re not an advance scout or anything? You guys aren’t planning to invade us?”

Loki rolls his eyes briefly. “Father decreed a thousand years ago that the other realms were to leave Midgard unmolested.”

“Your father. Wow. Wait. Does this mean you’re a prince?” At Loki’s bemused nod, Tony grins. “I knew I’d hit the jackpot. Now tell me: how did you get here?”

Without demur, Loki opens the world of Asgardian magic/science to Tony. He admits later that strictly speaking, telling Tony this is against the Prime Directive, but he’s only marginally better than Tony at following rules. He even tells Tony some of the secrets he’s discovered himself of traveling between the realms, things he says he’s revealed to no one else. Tony starts work on skywalking tech of his own based on what he learns from Loki.

And then Tony gets his chance to work with the Tesseract, and Loki is psyched too, and Tony has to forge papers for him because they are going to do this thing together. With the cube, humans will skywalk like Asgardians do. Maybe even build their own Bifrost.

 

One evening Loki shows up at Tony’s place looking excited. “I won’t be able to come here for a few months.”

“What’s up?”

Loki explains about his father’s recurring comas. “Thor is going to be king while Father sleeps. It will be his first reign. The last time Father went into the Odinsleep, Thor was too young; a king of Asgard must be at least one thousand years old. Mother served as regent then.”

“So why can’t you come visit?”

“Thor will need me!” Loki sits, taking Tony’s hands. His anticipation is infectious, even though Asgardian politics mean nothing to Tony. “This is what we have been waiting for all of our lives. I will be Thor's chief advisor and court mage.” He hesitates, allows himself a tiny frown. “I’m so worried for Thor. He’s a bit headstrong sometimes.”

“Lucky he has you.” Tony brushes a strand of black hair from Loki’s brow. “You’ll keep him on track. I know you’ll do your old man proud.”

And for just a flash of a second Tony sees something in Loki’s eyes so raw it hurts. Tony’s already gotten the lay of the land from Loki’s offhand remarks and old stories and, most of all, from what Loki  _doesn’t_ say. Thor is Daddy’s favorite. Loki dotes on his big brother, but their old man is a wedge between them.

Hopefully Loki’s dad will have the sense to appreciate Loki’s hard work when he wakes up.

Loki’s eyes - jade green today - move restlessly over the room, pausing on a dish of fruit the staff makes sure is always on the counter. Pepper told them to, hoping Tony would occasionally allow some vitamins into his system. “Tony, I would like you to carry out an Asgardian ritual with me. It is a sort of… formal declaration of friendship.”

“This doesn’t involve sacrificing a goat and smearing its blood on each other’s faces, does it?”

“Oh.” Loki manages to look crestfallen for an entire five seconds before the grin breaks through. “No goats. It consists of exchanging fruit. You give me a piece of fruit, I give you one, and we both eat. Every bite, or the friendship will fade away.”

It sounds kind of silly to Tony, but lots of customs sound silly if you didn’t grow up with them. And if his boyfriend wants it, he can play along. “Okay then.” Tony takes a nice-looking pear from the bowl and offers it to Loki. “Did you bring fruit for me?”

“Of course.” And Loki produces a perfectly ripe yellow apple. Tony prefers red apples, but since this is a ritual and he’s agreed to it, he doesn’t want to disappoint Loki. He takes it and is about to bite into it when Loki’s oddly intent gaze unnerves him. “Don’t tell me this is going to make me go into an Odinsleep until a handsome prince awakens me with a kiss.”

Loki smiles, slow and predatory. “Oh, I can promise you that the next time you wake up, it will be because a handsome prince kissed you.”

Tony laughs and they each take their first bites. They don’t say anything while they eat, just watch each other as they chew. Then they go to bed for a proper farewell. The next morning Tony is indeed awakened by the kiss of a handsome prince, and they pleasure each other one more time, and Loki promises to visit him in one month even if it’s just for half an hour, and Tony wishes him luck and says he has faith in him, and Loki kisses him one more time and then leaves.

Tony doesn’t see him again for a year and a half.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist using Bella and Edward's famous dialogue when I realized how much of it fit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony puts some pieces together.

The worst thing is, Tony has no way of contacting Loki, no way of knowing why he hasn’t been around. He could be dead. He could be in danger. And Tony can’t even call him.

As the months pass, Tony spends most of his waking moments in his lab, working on his skywalker device. He can’t make it work. Loki hasn’t told him enough about it.

Loki might need him. What if one of those other realms has overrun Asgard? What if Loki’s trapped in Nornheim or somewhere? What if some elven cad from Alfheim is trifling with his affections? Tony has to find a way to him. He keeps working on it.

He feels better than he has since he was a teenager. The years of alcohol and erratic hours and occasional drugs usually has him feeling like crap at least half the time, but all that seems to have melted away. He doesn’t notice at first, he’s busy, and when it occurs to him that he doesn’t get hung over like he used to, he figures he’s just really motivated because he’s in… because he has a hot boyfriend who is also a genius and an alien.

Then one night he’s reading some book about Norse mythology, hoping there might be some obscure hint somewhere that will help him figure out skywalking, and that’s when he finds out about the apples.

“That fucking bastard!”

He throws the book across the room. He’s shaking.

Not that he’s unhappy about being immortal - or at least very long-lived, Loki’s mentioned that his father is growing old so this probably isn’t forever, just a few millennia - but it’s not the first time he’s found out someone changed his body on him without his consent. They’re going to have to have a long, serious talk about this.

“Loki, you got some ’splainin’ to do,” he murmurs aloud, pouring himself a stiff drink.

What the hell is keeping Loki away?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow: Avengers Assemble!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avengers assemble!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where my opinion of Thor starts to show. If you like him, you probably won't want to read further.

The next time Tony sees his lover, a year and a half has passed since Loki fed him the apple and kissed him goodbye.

It isn’t the reunion Tony’s hoping for.

No, instead it’s Coulson interrupting his evening in the lab, carrying a Starkpad full of data, and Tony only looks at it at all because it’s the easiest way to get Coulson to go away. But there’s his long lost boyfriend using the Tesseract to return to Earth, and Loki looks like hell, like he’s been _through_ hell, and he kills half a dozen people and plays some kind of Jedi mind trick on three more and runs off with the cube.

At first Tony hopes it’s a different tall, dark and handsome alien, but then Loki speaks.  _“I am Loki, of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose.”_ Even aside from the name and the origin Tony would know that voice anywhere.

Somewhere in the past year and a half Loki’s acquired a grungy new hairdo and a magic spear and lost several marbles.  _“Freedom is life’s great lie,”_ he says, gleaming with sweat and shaking. He nearly falls over on his way to the truck with the cube; one of his newly brainwashed minions reaches to help him up.

Loki’s bright blue eyes are wide and frantic. Tony knows that look. He saw it in the mirror a few minutes after Rhodey picked him up in Afghanistan, when he went into the plane’s tiny lavatory to clean up a little. But that’s not all he notices.

Loki’s eyes have always changed color, according to the light and his moods. The pale green of a new leaf. The dull green of jade. The glittering green of emeralds.

They’ve never been blue.

And the people he pokes in the chest with the Glowstick of Destiny, their eyes turn blue, and Loki does this in front of several witnesses and surveillance cameras.

Like he wants everyone to know how it works.

Tony goes through all the data they give him. When he finds out that SHIELD had part of the story all along - something went down with Loki’s brother and New Mexico and a giant mecha, no one on Earth is quite sure what - he’s really pissed. He could’ve had that many more pieces of the puzzle all this time. He could’ve had Jane Foster and Erik Selvig helping him with the skywalking; looks like they learned a few things from Thor.

SHIELD is never keeping any more secrets from Tony. Not ever.

So Tony gets ready to hack SHIELD’s database when he gets a chance, and when Loki emerges from hiding again he suits up.

Time to pick up his boyfriend.

 

Nobody on Earth knows about him and Loki. When they started it was just a fling, and it grew into more and there was just never any reason to tell anyone, and then he figured out Loki was an alien and he didn’t want to share him and maybe have the government kidnap him so Tony’d have to steal him back by illegally driving an ambulance and then pedaling away on a bicycle while Loki magically made the bike fly to the alien rendezvous spot.

OK, so he watched  _E.T._ seventeen times back when it was in the theater. Sue him. 

Given how shady SHIELD’s behavior has been, he isn’t about to tell them now. They illegally arrested him once already; he wouldn’t put it past Fury to hold Tony hostage to control Loki. On the off chance that some feeling for Tony lingered in the hot mess that’s left of his gorgeous alien boyfriend.

So when he joins Cap in Stuttgart and Loki recognizes him and surrenders after Tony deals him a carefully calibrated nonlethal blast (luckily Loki doesn’t call his bluff, like he could seriously shoot his own boyfriend even if the man has gone nuts), he doesn’t tell his new teammate what’s between him and their prisoner. He tries to talk to Loki, hoping Loki can give him a hint, but Loki clams up. He looks like he’s being hunted. He probably is.

“I don’t like it. I don’t remember it being that easy,” Cap says, and Tony’s opinion of him rises a notch.

And then an even more muscle-y blond guy shows up, and this one has a hammer and can fly, and Tony’s finally going to meet the in-laws.

He’s stepping forward, planning how to introduce himself, when he gets a hammer to the chest. For a few seconds there Tony thinks he’s a goner - Loki’s told him about Mjölnir - but the suit takes it, or maybe it’s that apple, and he lives to see Thor yank Loki out of the seatbelts and fly off with him.

By the time Tony struggles to his feet and gets some air back into his lungs, he’s revised everything he knew about Thor. Loki had talked about him. He obviously adored his big brother, spoke affectionately of the man’s faults, bragged about his courage. “A bit headstrong,” Loki had said, obviously feeling like a traitor for criticizing his brother even that much. A bit? Asshole had been trained to be a king and his idea of dealing with the natives was to kill somebody for standing in his way. Suddenly Tony could imagine what Asgardian diplomacy was going to be like in centuries to come. The king greeting foreign dignitaries by murdering them without so much as a hello and the chief advisor trying to talk the survivors out of declaring war.

And the way Loki’d looked at Thor, all tearful and frightened, and Thor had just glared and bared his teeth and grabbed Loki like he was a sack of potatoes, not even a “hello” or a “what the hell”.

The people who met Thor in New Mexico claimed Loki had tried to kill Thor. That he’d told Thor their father was dead when he wasn’t so that Loki was king. This would have been maybe a week after Loki’d told Tony that his big brother was going to be king and Loki was going to help him and Loki’d been so excited and trying to act nonchalant and Tony had wanted to pat him on the top of his head.

If something seriously weird had not gone down during that week, Tony’d eat his helmet. Hell, he’d eat Loki’s, horns and all.

So Tony tries to give Thor the benefit of the doubt while he flies after them, but he sees Thor waving his fucking hammer in his little brother’s face and scowling at him and that is just not on.

He body-slams Thor.

“Do not touch me again,” Thor says, every inch the haughty crown prince.

“Then don’t take my stuff.”

Thor tries to kill him a few times, and fails, and Loki watches them fight over him with a grin. It’s the first Tony’s seen of the Loki he remembers. Cap comes to break up the fun and Thor tries to kill him too but the shield saves him and they only take down a few hundred pine trees.

 

Loki messes with everyone’s heads. Tony knew he would. Jarvis is hacking SHIELD and digging up its dirty little secrets, and dirty big secrets, and just being in the same room as Loki’s fucking spear screws with their heads and has them ready to whale the tar out of each other, and the Hulk comes out to play and Loki’s minions come for him and the newly assembled Avengers barely save the people on the helicarrier.

Most of them. Everyone else takes Coulson’s death really hard. Tony never liked the smooth bastard. Coulson took part in SHIELD’s kidnapping of him, threatened Tony with torture while  _living in his house_ , and now he knows that it was Coulson who stole Jane Foster’s research from her until Thor made him give it back.

Coulson had been a slimeball, but that wasn’t a capital offense. He didn’t deserve to be stabbed through the chest. Sure, he was aiming a lethal weapon at Loki when Loki stabbed him, but Loki was kind of invading the planet.

Jarvis shows him the footage of Loki just running Coulson through like he did it every day. Tony remembers the Disney prince he bedded a couple of years ago and tries to reconcile him with the grinning predator who’s come through the Tesseract from the other side of the universe.

_What the hell happened to my boyfriend?_

Problem is, Tony's pretty sure he knows.

 

When he finally gets a chance to talk to Loki he fishes for clues. Given how cagey Loki’s being, Tony assumes he’s under some kind of surveillance, so he doesn’t say anything too blunt. Neither does Loki.

“The Chitauri are coming. Nothing will change that.”

It’s not a threat. It’s a warning.

Tony lists his new comrades. It’d be an impressive list if they were dealing with the mafia, or street crime, or maybe even a human supervillain. Against an invulnerable sorcerer with an alien army? They are so screwed.

“You, big fella, have managed to piss off all of them.”

Loki smirks. “That was the plan.”

Yeah. Tony’d thought so. Making a big splashy entrance to make sure all Midgard knew there was a threat. Making a public display in Stuttgart instead of sneaking in the middle of the night so they’d all know about the iridium, and Loki knew that Tony knew what iridium was for.

Loki’d been warning them as hard as he’d been able to.

He wants to help Loki. Apparently he can’t, because Loki doesn’t drop any hints, Tony’s watching for them. For a minute there Tony thinks Loki really has lost his mind and is going to kill him, but then the spear taps the arc reactor and nothing happens and Loki knew it wouldn’t and Tony has to make a stupid joke to cover up his relief. He gives Jarvis the instructions about launching the suit, and Loki listens and knows it’ll be all right, so he throws Tony out the window and it’s scary as hell even though Tony knows the suit will get him and it does and when he gets back to his penthouse he shoots Loki, just a little bit. And leaves him there instead of going in for the kill or arresting him or anything.

Loki has to have a plan. Loki  _always_ has a plan.

Even with Loki on sabotage duty, they almost don’t make it. But somehow Loki’d managed to instruct Selvig to put in a safety catch without whoever commands the Chitauri catching on, and made sure Selvig knew how to use it, and Selvig does. And the World Council turns out to be even shadier than SHIELD and sends a  _fucking nuke_ to Manhattan, and Tony nearly buys the farm delivering it to the Lovecraftian horrors on the other side of the galaxy, and maybe only that apple Loki gave him lets him live to tell the tale, and while he’s falling all he can think is  _these monsters had my sweet pretty boyfriend for more than a year_ .

Why the fuck hadn’t Thor hauled Loki’s ass out of there?

Tony gets a short and garbled account of the past year and a half in Asgard over shawarma, but if the version of events Odin gave Thor isn’t at least fifty percent horseshit Tony will listen to nothing but Celine Dion for a month. Well, maybe a week. No, a month, because that’s grade A baloney if Tony ever heard it. But Thor just accepted the whole pile of crap, that Loki had tried to kill his father and brother because he wanted to seize the throne, and Thor talks for a long time about what Loki did to Jotunheim (which is pretty horrifying) before finally admitting that the reason the frost giants had declared war on Asgard in the first place was that Thor had killed a few hundred of them because somebody called him a “little princess”.

Given what he’s seen of Thor’s idea of foreign relations, Tony’s starting to think that he can’t blame Loki if he really did try to kill him to get the throne for himself. Tony’s probably met someone who was less suited than Thor to wield power at some point in his life, but offhand he can’t think of anyone. Not even Obie, or his captors in Afghanistan. At least Obie had tried to shoulder his responsibilities while he was doing his shady deals. At least the Ten Rings had more of a grievance against their targets than a playground insult.

 

Tony tries to have Loki imprisoned on Earth. He really, really does. But Thor wants to take him back, and none of the other humans want him here. If it weren’t for Thor’s magic hammer and the fact that he’s claimed the cube and refuses to give it back, Tony would try to keep Loki here by force. But Loki shakes his head at him, weary, not even resisting the fucking muzzle his loving brother puts on him.

Loki knows there’s nothing Tony can do. He doesn’t blame him.

That makes one of them.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony goes to Asgard.

The Asgardians are barely gone before Tony whisks Bruce away from the others and asks for his help. He doesn’t tell him the whole story, but he does tell him he’s been working on a teleporter, and points out that if more things like the Chitauri are on their way, that kind of tech would come in awfully handy.

Bruce agrees.

Then Tony goes after Jane Foster - SHIELD’s already got dibs on Erik Selvig. She’s got it bad for Thunder Boy and her passion for science is equal to Tony’s and she’s working on pretty much the same thing he is so that she can get to her alien boyfriend (just like Tony) so it’s easy to persuade her to join them.

He has to just hope that Loki’s still alive when they get it working.

Tony works on the teleporter fourteen hours a day. When he’s not doing that, he’s going over the footage of Loki’s invasion that Jarvis grabbed, every single minute of it.

There’s answers in here, somewhere.

There’s a couple of times, once during the Battle of Manhattan, when Loki suddenly flinches like he was electrocuted, only there’s nothing visible that could have done it. So Tony was right. Someone was controlling him, someone who could torture him from the other side of the galaxy. And no one else figured it out, not even Loki’s idolized big brother.

He tells SHIELD. He tells the other Avengers. Clint and Natasha seem irritated by the whole idea. Tony supposes they made it personal. The rest duly note the information and go about their business.

Steve notices that Tony’s concerned, even though Tony still hasn’t told them why he cares. “I’m sure Asgard found out about it during Loki’s trial,” Steve assures him.

It’s not as comforting as it would have been before Tony met Thor.

He keeps watching the footage.

Natasha’s conversation with Loki always seemed kind of weird to Tony. Maybe he’s just still holding a grudge against her for spying on him. But what the hell? Loki had practically told Fury outright that he intended to unleash the Hulk, and yet Natasha acted like figuring it out was some huge achievement on her part.

And then she started needling Bruce, deliberately reminding him that she’d manipulated him into coming, treating him like he was a bomb about to go off when he was already on edge. And she encouraged Fury to worry. And she made sure all of them were in the room with that fucking spear, and joined in the stupid spat they all had.

It was almost like she was _trying_ to set him off.

Almost, hell.

He watches her fight with Clint, over and over. Even after he seemed to come to his senses she whacked him again, and it freed him. A fortunate whack had freed Erik, and she knew she could trust his show of sanity.

How did she know? Lucky guess?

Tony doesn’t believe in luck.

He memorizes her verbal duel with Loki. Two skilled liars speaking to each other in code. It comes clear eventually.

“ _You would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.”_ Translated: appear as a friend, and I _will_ cooperate.

And she told him she wanted Clint’s freedom.

“ _And if I agree to spare him? What would you do?”_

“ _Not let you out.”_ Meaning, of course, that she _would_ let him out.

Tony isn’t convinced Loki needed her to open his cage. He’s a sorcerer. It seems just as likely that he had taken pity on someone who loved, someone who was loyal.

Loki delivered a standard villain rant, and for the climax planted the clue, his payment for her help.  _“And when he wakes just long enough to see what he’s done I’ll split his skull!”_

Natasha proceeded to split Clint’s skull - hit him in the head, really hard.

When he pieces this together and tells Jarvis, Jarvis just shows him the conversation the two of them had when Clint came out of the aftershock.

“ _What did Loki do to you?”_

“ _He didn’t, just….”_

Clint nodded suddenly, like he understood. He didn’t look happy. More resigned.

“ _I’ve got red in my ledger,”_ she said, lifting her chin _. “I’d like to wipe it out.”_

She’d joined the battle of Manhattan to atone for letting the monster out of his cage.

Tony doesn’t approach her about it. He keeps it in reserve. He might need it one day.

A week after figuring this out, he goes to bed one night so exhausted that he’s sure he’ll fall asleep the minute his head hits the pillow. He doesn’t, of course. His brain seems to be idling, just flitting around at random, and then for some reason Loki’s confrontation with the Hulk pops into his mind. He sits up and demands that Jarvis show him the footage again, right this minute. He has to see if his sudden insight is right.

The Hulk had slammed him, and Loki had looked up, terrified, but instead of running or casting an illusion or doing anything sensible, Loki had chosen that moment to  _stand his ground._ “I am a god, you dull creature!” Loki had roared, feet planted apart, chin jutting forward like he was ready to take a punch.

Tony has to close his eyes while his lover is slammed against the floor like a rag doll pounded by a toddler, but he watches the moment beforehand over and over. The fear and the desperate determination in Loki’s eyes.

Loki’s  _blue_ eyes.

He’d  _wanted_ the Hulk to smash him. To smash the Chitauri’s master right out of his head. He’d known it would hurt, had known he might not even survive, but he’d gotten right up in the Hulk’s face and challenged him. Knowing what would happen. Knowing it was his only hope of breaking his puppet master’s link with him.

When he crawled out of the crater afterwards, Loki’s eyes were green again.

It’s the bravest fucking thing Tony’s ever seen.

That’s probably when he finally thinks the L-word in relation to Loki for the first time.

 

It takes the three of them - Tony, Bruce Banner and Jane Foster - two months to invent teleportation. To be honest, Tony does most of it, with information he got from Loki, but it would have taken him at least another month without their help. He still insists on being the first to use it.  _Sorry, Foster,_ _**my** _ _ boyfriend might be in mortal peril.  _ _**Your** _ _ love life will just have to wait. _

Tony suits up and zaps himself to the Observatory and explains to the huge scary guy who must be Heimdall that he’s Thor’s Midgardian shield-brother. Thor welcomes him heartily with manly shoulder-claps that almost knock him over. He doesn’t present him to the king just yet, which Tony figures is just as well. Instead Thor takes him to get drunk with Thor’s shield-brothers.

Loki had obviously been trying to be tactful when he talked about his brother’s friends. Their loyalty to his beloved brother had clearly outweighed everything else in his eyes. Still, Tony had gotten the impression they weren’t overbright.

As it turns out, they’re idiots.

Thor asks after the rest of the Avengers, but he’s obviously only interested in Jane. He asks question after question about her, apparently not minding that his girlfriend - well, probably ex-girlfriend now - is sitting right there, listening and looking intensely miserable.

What a guy.

Tony obligingly tells him that Jane’s fine and isn’t seeing anyone. After going on for a while about that, Tony figures he can ask the question uppermost in his own mind.

“So what happened to your brother?”

Thor scowls, a thundercloud obscuring the sunshine of his smile. “I have no brother.”

Fuck. “Okay then. What happened to the guy who unleashed an alien army onto my planet?”

This gets smirks from Thor’s friends. “Fear not, Man of Iron,” Sif tells him. “Loki will never imperil your world again.”

“Is he dead?” And the two or three seconds Tony has to wait for his answer take approximately one million years apiece.

“Mother prevailed upon Father to spare his life.” Thor snarls at the memory. “Women are foolish in such matters. She still believes him to be her son. But at least he will spend the rest of his wicked days in the dungeon of Asgard.”

“The rest of his wicked days? How long is that?”

“Asgardians live for five thousand years.” That was Hogun.

And Loki was already one thousand years old. That meant four thousand years in jail.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It must be rough, after he was your friend - uh, shield-brother - for a thousand years.”

Thor’s friends snarl. Thor scowls. “Do not be. Asgard is better off without him.”

“Can I see him? SHIELD wants to know more about the Chitauri.”

“He is not permitted visitors.”

“But surely for purposes of government intelligence, you could take me down there.”

“I cannot. No one is allowed to see him.”

“Wait, not even his family?”

“He has no family,” Thor reminds him, looking pissed.

“Right, sorry. So maybe you can answer some of my questions. You told Fury that you thought he was dead for a year and a half before he showed up on Earth. Where the hell was he? What happened to him during that year?” When Thor shrugs, Tony presses. “Didn’t your father tell you?”

“I do not think Father troubled to ask.” And Thor sounds like he doesn’t give a fuck.

At first Tony doesn’t believe him. “C’mon, your dad’s the god of wisdom, he’s got to realize that the Chitauri might show up here looking for Loki. Either to use him again, or to punish him for failing to conquer Earth.”

All the Asgardians smile widely at that. “Let them come!” Volstagg cries, slamming his now-empty tankard onto the table. “We will show them the might of Asgard’s warriors!”

Tony feels like he’s trapped in a high school locker room with a steroid-addled football team. Only the football players have superstrength and lethal weapons.

“Didn’t anything about it come out during Loki’s trial?”

They actually laugh at that. “There is no need for trials when a realm has a king as wise as Odin,” Sif explains, condescending. “He had already determined what Loki’s sentence should be before Thor even brought him back.”

For a minute Tony thinks he’s going to vomit all over the table. He’d thought the four thousand years of solitary confinement was bad. It had never occurred to him Loki wouldn’t even have a trial.

Even if he’d never seen Loki before the man showed up in SHIELD’s installation killing people and stealing the Tesseract, even if Tony hadn’t been positive there were extenuating circumstances driving his boyfriend’s stint in super villainy, this would have made him sick. Right then and there, Tony vows: one way or another, whether Loki’s cool with it or not, Asgard has got to be taken down.

But first things first.

“Let me invite you, shield-brothers-once-removed, to join me in a Midgardian custom.” He signals for more mead. “Each of you tells a story, a tale of a battle you’ve been in if possible, and we all have to take a drink every time….” He thinks for a second. “Every time in the story you kill somebody. A drink for every kill, even if a lot were made at once.”

The Aesir agree with enthusiasm. Tony merely raises the cup to his lips after the first few drinks, excusing his small sips with Midgardian fragility. Thor tells the first story and they’re all well on their way to being hammered (ha, ha) before he’s halfway through.

After several stories, when Thor is slurring his speech and no one’s sober enough to pay attention to more tales, Tony starts grilling him. “So. Exactly where is Asgard’s dungeon?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed part of this chapter from my originally posted version. Because of reasons. ETA: And again for Reasons, changed it back.
> 
> In the theatrical cut of _Avengers_ , we only see The Other torturing Loki long-distance once, but another instance, during the Battle of Manhattan, was filmed, along with The Other giving him instructions. I suspect they cut those bits because they realized that for the second movie in a row, they had accidentally made Loki the hero. They butchered the first _Thor_ movie as well in the hope that we wouldn't notice that Loki was the hero, but it didn't work. By _Thor: The Dark World_ they apparently just gave up.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony goes down to the dungeon.

Tony knows he has to move fast. From what Thor says, Odin isn’t too thrilled that a human figured out how to sky-walk. He gives himself twenty-four hours to figure out the palace layout.

Tony questions Thor and his friends that night until they all pass out, and continues the next day. They’re mystified by Tony’s curiosity, but answer him with offhand promptness before going back to more interesting topics, like how many people they’ve killed. (Tony asks for summaries and does some mental arithmetic and concludes that Loki’s in prison because even after attacking Jotunheim and Manhattan, his kill count is so comparatively low it’s an embarrassment to his family.)

There’s one thing on Tony’s side. Asgard is _complacent._ No enemy’s ever reached the kingdom itself; they have to travel to another planet to find anyone to fight with. They don’t seem to think anyone could possibly threaten them. Certainly not a _mortal._

The second night Tony’s in Asgard, he waits till everyone else is drunk or making out or both and slips away from the feasting. He’s come prepared. The suit he fitted especially for this trip (he calls it the “Thor-buster”, but doesn’t tell anyone that) blows what he calls “pixie dust” into an opponent’s face - one puff is enough to knock out three bull elephants, so he figures it should suffice for an Asgardian. He knocks out each guard he encounters and hurries down the corridor.

He’s scared out of his mind, in a dungeon on an alien planet, but he’s not leaving the man he loves down here.

When he finds Loki all in one piece, he almost collapses with relief. And has to laugh a little at the amazement on Loki’s face.

Loki’s stretched out on a narrow bed. The cell is blindingly white, but at least there’s a bed, a table, a chair, a few books. He’s apparently engaged in memorizing the brushstrokes on the ceiling. When Tony comes into view, he stares for a second, unfolds his lanky form from the bed to come to the wall, and just stares some more.

“I’m not a hallucination,” Tony says. He knows how he would have reacted, if a friend had shown up in that cave in Afghanistan.

Loki’s more gorgeous than ever. His inky hair’s gotten long and flowing, that fair skin is even paler and more unblemished than before, and his eyes are blessedly green, the green of moss on the shady side of a tree.

“You okay, babe?”

Those green eyes narrow with suspicion, and then a spark of humor. “How do you synthesize a methylated alkaloid?”

“With an electrophilic or nucleophilic compound.” Tony grins, remembering when he and Loki watched _Love Potion No. 9_. They’d both loved that movie; the revenge of the nerds, a couple of dorky scientists sowing their wild oats with a love potion before finding true love with each other. “Which reminds me, you must’ve slipped me a love potion at some point. You got me infatuated enough to come all the way to Asgard to get you.”

The joke reminds Tony of what Loki _did_ slip him. But they’ll deal with that later. 

They’ve got a lot to deal with, later. 

Right now Loki’s just staring at him, completely stunned. Everyone else abandoned Loki, and now he’s finding out that one person didn’t.

“How do I get you out of there?” Tony asks.

Loki swallows, then points to a crystal… thingamajig on the wall. Tony follows his instructions and the forcefield evaporates and Loki doesn’t wait even an instant before stepping out into the corridor and grasping Tony’s shoulders in a grip that would probably be painful without the suit.

“C’mon, we’ve got to get out of here, then I can sky-walk us-“

“Allow me.”

Golden light emanates from Loki, and enfolds the two of them, and a moment later they’re in a field of flowers, under a sunny sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered, when I first got this idea, having Tony show up in _Thor 2_ while Thor was about to beat up a manacled Loki on that boat and putting a stop to Thor's bullying. However, for me what's most important is getting Loki out of that fucking cell. That mental image, Loki in that blinding white box, is viscerally horrifying to me, and over a year later I'm still having nightmares about it, though not very often by now, thankfully.
> 
> Next: our heroes resolve their issues and lay their future plans.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conclusion.

It’s not Earth, Tony’s sure of that. The sky’s the wrong shade of blue and the plants are shaped funny. It’s beautiful, though, mountains in the distance, strange and brightly colored flowers close by, iridescent creatures the size of his hand gliding by on gossamer wings, bracingly cool like it’s early autumn.

Loki just stands looking at the horizon, inhaling the air. Tony understands, he spent weeks in a cave that might have been his tomb, so he stands back and lets Loki feast his eyes on the sky.

“Where are we?” he asks eventually.

Loki turns to him, with a confiding smile. “A planet orbiting - I don’t know the Midgardian names of stars. Intelligent life has not yet evolved. You and I are the only sentient beings who have ever set foot here.”

Meaning Loki had shared his secret hideout with Tony and no one else. “I’m honored.”

Loki steps closer and cups Tony’s face in his hands and just looks at him for what feels like a long time. And then Loki’s touching him and kissing him like he’s starving, which he kind of is, and they finally have their long-overdue reunion, Loki lying on the not-grass and looking at the sky while he wraps his arms and legs around Tony and Tony kisses his neck and buries his fingers in that long silky hair and tries to make up in one hour for all the suffering Loki’s been through in the past two years.

 

Later Loki stands up, not bothering to dress (Tony ogles him without shame), and plucks a round purple fruit from a - it’s not quite a tree, but the word is close enough. He holds it out to Tony, completing the Garden of Eden vibe they’ve got going on. Tony just looks at it.

“Ah.” Loki lowers his hand. “It’s only fruit.”

He sits down and they’re quiet for a minute. Loki’s already given Tony the fruit of knowledge, metaphorically, and the fruit of life, literally. Too bad he was so serpentine about it.

“I have a great many things to apologize for. I may as well start with this.”

“I’m glad you gave it to me. It’s lying to me about it that pissed me off.” Tony taps the arc reactor. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to find out someone’s completely changed your body without even telling you?”

Loki turns to face him. He speaks very quietly. “Yes.”

Oh.

There’s a story there, Tony knows it. Tony’s never seen a look like that on Loki’s face before. His eyes, the new faint lines on his face show things that weren’t there before. Sorrow, fear, grief.

Oh, hell. Whatever Loki’s been through in the last two years, it’s made him grow up. Yeah, Loki’s a thousand years old, but there’d been a youthfulness to him that’s gone now.

Tony will personally beat the crap out of everyone who’s destroyed that.

“At the time,” Loki says, somber, “I thought only of my own delight when I eventually revealed my gift to you. I failed to think of it from your perspective. It did not occur to me until later, while I was brooding in Asgard’s dungeon, how wrong it was of me.” He examines his left hand, turning it over and stretching the fingers. It looks the same way as it always has to Tony, but Loki’s looking for something there. “And now I know something of discovering one’s body has been changed without one’s knowledge. Now I would never dream of doing such a thing to anyone without giving them full warning.” He meets Tony’s gaze again. “I am sorry.”

“And now you’ve apologized and I know you’ve learned about boundaries, we can get on with things.”

The relief on Loki’s face is sweet. To seal the deal, Tony leans over and takes the purple fruit from Loki’s hand, takes a bite. It’s delicious.

They watch a pyrotechnic sunset and eat these crunchy things kind of like nuts, only they’re sort of flat and almost crispy and Tony’s going to have to come back here just for these. Tony explains how he finished the skywalker tech and came for Loki. Loki takes a minute before saying quietly, “Tony, I can never thank you enough. Anything you want, you have but to ask.”

“Don’t invade my world again. Don’t try to destroy any more planets.”

Loki’s eyes flit to him. “I wasn’t going to do that anyway.”

“I didn’t think so. Thought I’d better make sure.”

“Thor told you about Jotunheim.”

“Yeah.”

“And you still came for me.”

“I wasn’t leaving you in that fucking place. Especially when your whole realm is so fucking clueless. So what happened?”

It’s a few seconds before he gets an answer. “Do you realize that no one else has asked me that?”

Loki looks like he’s going to cry and it makes Tony sick. No one should ever be that pathetically grateful for basic decency. Hell, self-preservation should’ve had Asgard asking this question, never mind concern for a man who’d been a loyal friend, brother, son for a thousand years.

Apparently ninety percent of Asgard’s brains were stored in Loki’s skull.

Tony moves closer, puts an arm around him. “I knew from the start something really weird had gone down. I’ve put some of it together. I want the whole story.”

“And you’ll have it. But first….” Loki laces his fingers through the not-grass around him. “Tony, beloved, I would love nothing more than to spend the rest of my life in your bed and your workshop. If you’ll still have me. But I have a great deal to atone for. Not only what I did to Jotunheim and Midgard - those are the least of my crimes.” He looks at the horizon, grim-faced. “For a thousand years I have aided a tyrant in oppressing the Nine Realms. I loved him and so I deceived myself about what he was. I put my mind and my magic and my sword at Odin’s service. Had I not, he might have been toppled centuries ago. At the least, he would not have killed or tyrannized quite so many.”

“You’re going to put a stop to Asgard’s tyranny.”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’s what I’m going to do. We’ll do it together.”

“It will be very dangerous, Tony.”

“Oh, well, never mind then. I can’t stand danger.”

Loki smiles. Tony missed that pretty smile so much.

This time it’s Tony’s turn to look at the sky.

It’s a nice sky.

 


End file.
